Effect of acoustic excitation on the flow over a low- Re airfoil

Abstract

Wind-tunnel measurements of lift, drag and wake velocity spectra were carried out under (tonal) acoustic excitation for a smooth airfoil in the chord-Reynolds-number (Rec) range of 4 × 104−1.4 × 105. The data are supported by smoke-wire flowvisualization pictures. Small-amplitude excitation in a wide, low-frequency range is found to eliminate laminar separation that otherwise degrades the airfoil performance at low Rec near the design angle of attack. Excitation at high frequencies, scaling as , eliminates a pre-stall, periodic shedding of large-scale vortices; U∞ is the free-stream velocity. Significant improvement in lift is also achieved during post-stall, but with large-amplitude excitation. Wind-tunnel resonances strongly influence the results, especially in cases requiring large amplitudes. It is shown that large transverse velocity fluctuations, induced near the airfoil by specific cross-resonance modes, lead to the most effective separation control; resonances inducing only large-amplitude pressure fluctuations are demonstrated to be less effective.